________________________________________________
_ Five-and-twenty years ago, at the epoch of this story, there dwelt in
one of the Middle States a man whom we shall call Fauntleroy; a man
of wealth, and magnificent tastes, and prodigal expenditure. His
home might almost be styled a palace; his habits, in the ordinary
sense, princely. His whole being seemed to have crystallized itself
into an external splendor, wherewith he glittered in the eyes of the
world, and had no other life than upon this gaudy surface. He had
married a lovely woman, whose nature was deeper than his own. But
his affection for her, though it showed largely, was superficial,
like all his other manifestations and developments; he did not so
truly keep this noble creature in his heart, as wear her beauty for
the most brilliant ornament of his outward state. And there was born
to him a child, a beautiful daughter, whom he took from the
beneficent hand of God with no just sense of her immortal value, but
as a man already rich in gems would receive another jewel. If he
loved her, it was because she shone.
After Fauntleroy had thus spent a few empty years, coruscating
continually an unnatural light, the source of it--which was merely
his gold--began to grow more shallow, and finally became exhausted.
He saw himself in imminent peril of losing all that had heretofore
distinguished him; and, conscious of no innate worth to fall back
upon, he recoiled from this calamity with the instinct of a soul
shrinking from annihilation. To avoid it,--wretched man!--or rather
to defer it, if but for a month, a day, or only to procure himself
the life of a few breaths more amid the false glitter which was now
less his own than ever,--he made himself guilty of a crime. It was
just the sort of crime, growing out of its artificial state, which
society (unless it should change its entire constitution for this
man's unworthy sake) neither could nor ought to pardon. More safely
might it pardon murder. Fauntleroy's guilt was discovered. He fled;
his wife perished, by the necessity of her innate nobleness, in its
alliance with a being so ignoble; and betwixt her mother's death and
her father's ignominy, his daughter was left worse than orphaned.
There was no pursuit after Fauntleroy. His family connections, who
had great wealth, made such arrangements with those whom he had
attempted to wrong as secured him from the retribution that would
have overtaken an unfriended criminal. The wreck of his estate was
divided among his creditors: His name, in a very brief space, was
forgotten by the multitude who had passed it so diligently from mouth
to mouth. Seldom, indeed, was it recalled, even by his closest
former intimates. Nor could it have been otherwise. The man had
laid no real touch on any mortal's heart. Being a mere image, an
optical delusion, created by the sunshine of prosperity, it was his
law to vanish into the shadow of the first intervening cloud. He
seemed to leave no vacancy; a phenomenon which, like many others that
attended his brief career, went far to prove the illusiveness of his
existence.
Not, however, that the physical substance of Fauntleroy had literally
melted into vapor. He had fled northward to the New England
metropolis, and had taken up his abode, under another name, in a
squalid street or court of the older portion of the city. There he
dwelt among poverty-stricken wretches, sinners, and forlorn good
people, Irish, and whomsoever else were neediest. Many families were
clustered in each house together, above stairs and below, in the
little peaked garrets, and even in the dusky cellars. The house
where Fauntleroy paid weekly rent for a chamber and a closet had been
a stately habitation in its day. An old colonial governor had built
it, and lived there, long ago, and held his levees in a great room
where now slept twenty Irish bedfellows; and died in Fauntleroy's
chamber, which his embroidered and white-wigged ghost still haunted.
Tattered hangings, a marble hearth, traversed with many cracks and
fissures, a richly carved oaken mantelpiece, partly hacked away for
kindling-stuff, a stuccoed ceiling, defaced with great, unsightly
patches of the naked laths,--such was the chamber's aspect, as if,
with its splinters and rags of dirty splendor, it were a kind of
practical gibe at this poor, ruined man of show.
At first, and at irregular intervals, his relatives allowed
Fauntleroy a little pittance to sustain life; not from any love,
perhaps, but lest poverty should compel him, by new offences, to add
more shame to that with which he had already stained them. But he
showed no tendency to further guilt. His character appeared to have
been radically changed (as, indeed, from its shallowness, it well
might) by his miserable fate; or, it may be, the traits now seen in
him were portions of the same character, presenting itself in another
phase. Instead of any longer seeking to live in the sight of the
world, his impulse was to shrink into the nearest obscurity, and to
be unseen of men, were it possible, even while standing before their
eyes. He had no pride; it was all trodden in the dust. No
ostentation; for how could it survive, when there was nothing left of
Fauntleroy, save penury and shame! His very gait demonstrated that
he would gladly have faded out of view, and have crept about
invisibly, for the sake of sheltering himself from the irksomeness of
a human glance. Hardly, it was averred, within the memory of those
who knew him now, had he the hardihood to show his full front to the
world. He skulked in corners, and crept about in a sort of noonday
twilight, making himself gray and misty, at all hours, with his
morbid intolerance of sunshine.
In his torpid despair, however, he had done an act which that
condition of the spirit seems to prompt almost as often as prosperity
and hope. Fauntleroy was again married. He had taken to wife a
forlorn, meek-spirited, feeble young woman, a seamstress, whom he
found dwelling with her mother in a contiguous chamber of the old
gubernatorial residence. This poor phantom--as the beautiful and
noble companion of his former life had done brought him a daughter.
And sometimes, as from one dream into another, Fauntleroy looked
forth out of his present grimy environment into that past
magnificence, and wondered whether the grandee of yesterday or the
pauper of to-day were real. But, in my mind, the one and the other
were alike impalpable. In truth, it was Fauntleroy's fatality to
behold whatever he touched dissolve. After a few years, his second
wife (dim shadow that she had always been) faded finally out of the
world, and left Fauntleroy to deal as he might with their pale and
nervous child. And, by this time, among his distant relatives,--with
whom he had grown a weary thought, linked with contagious infamy, and
which they were only too willing to get rid of,--he was himself
supposed to be no more.
The younger child, like his elder one, might be considered as the
true offspring of both parents, and as the reflection of their state.
She was a tremulous little creature, shrinking involuntarily from
all mankind, but in timidity, and no sour repugnance. There was a
lack of human substance in her; it seemed as if, were she to stand up
in a sunbeam, it would pass right through her figure, and trace out
the cracked and dusty window-panes upon the naked floor. But,
nevertheless, the poor child had a heart; and from her mother's
gentle character she had inherited a profound and still capacity of
affection. And so her life was one of love. She bestowed it partly
on her father, but in greater part on an idea.
For Fauntleroy, as they sat by their cheerless fireside,--which was
no fireside, in truth, but only a rusty stove,--had often talked to
the little girl about his former wealth, the noble loveliness of his
first wife, and the beautiful child whom she had given him. Instead
of the fairy tales which other parents tell, he told Priscilla this.
And, out of the loneliness of her sad little existence, Priscilla's
love grew, and tended upward, and twined itself perseveringly around
this unseen sister; as a grapevine might strive to clamber out of a
gloomy hollow among the rocks, and embrace a young tree standing in
the sunny warmth above. It was almost like worship, both in its
earnestness and its humility; nor was it the less humble--though the
more earnest--because Priscilla could claim human kindred with the
being whom she, so devoutly loved. As with worship, too, it gave her
soul the refreshment of a purer atmosphere. Save for this singular,
this melancholy, and yet beautiful affection, the child could hardly
have lived; or, had she lived, with a heart shrunken for lack of any
sentiment to fill it, she must have yielded to the barren miseries of
her position, and have grown to womanhood characterless and worthless.
But now, amid all the sombre coarseness of her father's outward
life, and of her own, Priscilla had a higher and imaginative life
within. Some faint gleam thereof was often visible upon her face.
It was as if, in her spiritual visits to her brilliant sister, a
portion of the latter's brightness had permeated our dim Priscilla,
and still lingered, shedding a faint illumination through the
cheerless chamber, after she came back.
As the child grew up, so pallid and so slender, and with much
unaccountable nervousness, and all the weaknesses of neglected
infancy still haunting her, the gross and simple neighbors whispered
strange things about Priscilla. The big, red, Irish matrons, whose
innumerable progeny swarmed out of the adjacent doors, used to mock
at the pale Western child. They fancied--or, at least, affirmed it,
between jest and earnest--that she was not so solid flesh and blood
as other children, but mixed largely with a thinner element. They
called her ghost-child, and said that she could indeed vanish when
she pleased, but could never, in her densest moments, make herself
quite visible. The sun at midday would shine through her; in the
first gray of the twilight, she lost all the distinctness of her
outline; and, if you followed the dim thing into a dark corner,
behold! she was not there. And it was true that Priscilla had
strange ways; strange ways, and stranger words, when she uttered any
words at all. Never stirring out of the old governor's dusky house,
she sometimes talked of distant places and splendid rooms, as if she
had just left them. Hidden things were visible to her (at least so
the people inferred from obscure hints escaping unawares out of her
mouth), and silence was audible. And in all the world there was
nothing so difficult to be endured, by those who had any dark secret
to conceal, as the glance of Priscilla's timid and melancholy eyes.
Her peculiarities were the theme of continual gossip among the other
inhabitants of the gubernatorial mansion. The rumor spread thence
into a wider circle. Those who knew old Moodie, as he was now called,
used often to jeer him, at the very street-corners, about his
daughter's gift of second-sight and prophecy. It was a period when
science (though mostly through its empirical professors) was bringing
forward, anew, a hoard of facts and imperfect theories, that had
partially won credence in elder times, but which modern scepticism
had swept away as rubbish. These things were now tossed up again,
out of the surging ocean of human thought and experience. The story
of Priscilla's preternatural manifestations, therefore, attracted a
kind of notice of which it would have been deemed wholly unworthy a
few years earlier. One day a gentleman ascended the creaking
staircase, and inquired which was old Moodie's chamber door. And,
several times, he came again. He was a marvellously handsome man,--
still youthful, too, and fashionably dressed. Except that
Priscilla, in those days, had no beauty, and, in the languor of her
existence, had not yet blossomed into womanhood, there would have
been rich food for scandal in these visits; for the girl was
unquestionably their sole object, although her father was supposed
always to be present. But, it must likewise be added, there was
something about Priscilla that calumny could not meddle with; and
thus far was she privileged, either by the preponderance of what was
spiritual, or the thin and watery blood that left her cheek so pallid.
Yet, if the busy tongues of the neighborhood spared Priscilla in one
way, they made themselves amends by renewed and wilder babble on
another score. They averred that the strange gentleman was a wizard,
and that he had taken advantage of Priscilla's lack of earthly
substance to subject her to himself, as his familiar spirit, through
whose medium he gained cognizance of whatever happened, in regions
near or remote. The boundaries of his power were defined by the
verge of the pit of Tartarus on the one hand, and the third sphere of
the celestial world on the other. Again, they declared their
suspicion that the wizard, with all his show of manly beauty, was
really an aged and wizened figure, or else that his semblance of a
human body was only a necromantic, or perhaps a mechanical
contrivance, in which a demon walked about. In proof of it, however,
they could merely instance a gold band around his upper teeth, which
had once been visible to several old women, when he smiled at them
from the top of the governor's staircase. Of course this was all
absurdity, or mostly so. But, after every possible deduction, there
remained certain very mysterious points about the stranger's
character, as well as the connection that he established with
Priscilla. Its nature at that period was even less understood than
now, when miracles of this kind have grown so absolutely stale, that
I would gladly, if the truth allowed, dismiss the whole matter from
my narrative.
We must now glance backward, in quest of the beautiful daughter of
Fauntleroy's prosperity. What had become of her? Fauntleroy's only
brother, a bachelor, and with no other relative so near, had adopted
the forsaken child. She grew up in affluence, with native graces
clustering luxuriantly about her. In her triumphant progress towards
womanhood, she was adorned with every variety of feminine
accomplishment. But she lacked a mother's care. With no adequate
control, on any hand (for a man, however stern, however wise, can
never sway and guide a female child), her character was left to shape
itself. There was good in it, and evil. Passionate, self-willed,
and imperious, she had a warm and generous nature; showing the
richness of the soil, however, chiefly by the weeds that flourished
in it, and choked up the herbs of grace. In her girlhood her uncle
died. As Fauntleroy was supposed to be likewise dead, and no other
heir was known to exist, his wealth devolved on her, although, dying
suddenly, the uncle left no will. After his death there were obscure
passages in Zenobia's history. There were whispers of an attachment,
and even a secret marriage, with a fascinating and accomplished but
unprincipled young man. The incidents and appearances, however,
which led to this surmise soon passed away, and were forgotten.
Nor was her reputation seriously affected by the report. In fact, so
great was her native power and influence, and such seemed the
careless purity of her nature, that whatever Zenobia did was
generally acknowledged as right for her to do. The world never
criticised her so harshly as it does most women who transcend its
rules. It almost yielded its assent, when it beheld her stepping out
of the common path, and asserting the more extensive privileges of
her sex, both theoretically and by her practice. The sphere of
ordinary womanhood was felt to be narrower than her development
required.
A portion of Zenobia's more recent life is told in the foregoing
pages. Partly in earnest,--and, I imagine, as was her disposition,
half in a proud jest, or in a kind of recklessness that had grown
upon her, out of some hidden grief,--she had given her countenance,
and promised liberal pecuniary aid, to our experiment of a better
social state. And Priscilla followed her to Blithedale. The sole
bliss of her life had been a dream of this beautiful sister, who had
never so much as known of her existence. By this time, too, the poor
girl was enthralled in an intolerable bondage, from which she must
either free herself or perish. She deemed herself safest near
Zenobia, into whose large heart she hoped to nestle.
One evening, months after Priscilla's departure, when Moodie (or
shall we call him Fauntleroy?) was sitting alone in the state-chamber
of the old governor, there came footsteps up the staircase. There
was a pause on the landing-place. A lady's musical yet haughty
accents were heard making an inquiry from some denizen of the house,
who had thrust a head out of a contiguous chamber. There was then a
knock at Moodie's door. "Come in!" said he.
And Zenobia entered. The details of the interview that followed
being unknown to me,--while, notwithstanding, it would be a pity
quite to lose the picturesqueness of the situation,--I shall attempt
to sketch it, mainly from fancy, although with some general grounds
of surmise in regard to the old man's feelings.
She gazed wonderingly at the dismal chamber. Dismal to her, who
beheld it only for an instant; and how much more so to him, into
whose brain each bare spot on the ceiling, every tatter of the
paper-hangings, and all the splintered carvings of the mantelpiece,
seen wearily through long years, had worn their several prints!
Inexpressibly miserable is this familiarity with objects that have
been from the first disgustful.
"I have received a strange message," said Zenobia, after a moment's
silence, "requesting, or rather enjoining it upon me, to come hither.
Rather from curiosity than any other motive,--and because, though a
woman, I have not all the timidity of one,--I have complied. Can it
be you, sir, who thus summoned me?"
"It was," answered Moodie.
"And what was your purpose?" she continued. "You require charity,
perhaps? In that case, the message might have been more fitly worded.
But you are old and poor, and age and poverty should be allowed
their privileges. Tell me, therefore, to what extent you need my aid."
"Put up your purse," said the supposed mendicant, with an
inexplicable smile. "Keep it,--keep all your wealth,--until I demand
it all, or none! My message had no such end in view. You are
beautiful, they tell me; and I desired to look at you."
He took the one lamp that showed the discomfort and sordidness of his
abode, and approaching Zenobia held it up, so as to gain the more
perfect view of her, from top to toe. So obscure was the chamber,
that you could see the reflection of her diamonds thrown upon the
dingy wall, and flickering with the rise and fall of Zenobia's breath.
It was the splendor of those jewels on her neck, like lamps that
burn before some fair temple, and the jewelled flower in her hair,
more than the murky, yellow light, that helped him to see her beauty.
But he beheld it, and grew proud at heart; his own figure, in spite
of his mean habiliments, assumed an air of state and grandeur.
"It is well," cried old Moodie. "Keep your wealth. You are right
worthy of it. Keep it, therefore, but with one condition only."
Zenobia thought the old man beside himself, and was moved with pity.
"Have you none to care for you?" asked she. "No daughter?--no
kind-hearted neighbor?--no means of procuring the attendance which
you need? Tell me once again, can I do nothing for you?"
"Nothing," he replied. "I have beheld what I wished. Now leave me.
Linger not a moment longer, or I may be tempted to say what would
bring a cloud over that queenly brow. Keep all your wealth, but with
only this one condition: Be kind--be no less kind than sisters
are--to my poor Priscilla!"
And, it may be, after Zenobia withdrew, Fauntleroy paced his gloomy
chamber, and communed with himself as follows,--or, at all events, it
is the only solution which I can offer of the enigma presented in his
character:--"I am unchanged,--the same man as of yore!" said he.
"True, my brother's wealth--he dying intestate--is legally my own. I
know it; yet of my own choice, I live a beggar, and go meanly clad,
and hide myself behind a forgotten ignominy. Looks this like
ostentation? Ah! but in Zenobia I live again! Beholding her, so
beautiful,--so fit to be adorned with all imaginable splendor of
outward state,--the cursed vanity, which, half a lifetime since,
dropt off like tatters of once gaudy apparel from my debased and
ruined person, is all renewed for her sake. Were I to reappear, my
shame would go with me from darkness into daylight. Zenobia has the
splendor, and not the shame. Let the world admire her, and be
dazzled by her, the brilliant child of my prosperity! It is
Fauntleroy that still shines through her!" But then, perhaps,
another thought occurred to him.
"My poor Priscilla! And am I just to her, in surrendering all to
this beautiful Zenobia? Priscilla! I love her best,--I love her
only!--but with shame, not pride. So dim, so pallid, so shrinking,--
the daughter of my long calamity! Wealth were but a mockery in
Priscilla's hands. What is its use, except to fling a golden
radiance around those who grasp it? Yet let Zenobia take heed!
Priscilla shall have no wrong!" But, while the man of show thus
meditated,--that very evening, so far as I can adjust the dates of
these strange incidents,--Priscilla poor, pallid flower!--was either
snatched from Zenobia's hand, or flung wilfully away! _
Read next: CHAPTER XXIII - A VILLAGE HALL
Read previous: CHAPTER XXI - AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE
Table of content of Blithedale Romance
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
